THE DOHNE BREED
The Dohne Advantage
The Dohne Merino is a dual purpose merino developed by the South Africa Department of Agriculture using Peppin-Based Merino ewes and German Mutton sires. The breeding program started more than 60 years ago and the progeny were interbred and selected for high fertility, rapid lamb growth and fine Merino wool production under rangeland conditions.
The Dohne today is a well balanced dual purpose breed that allows the commercial producer to market both a quality heavy weight lamb and fine-medium white wool.
The breed was introduced into Australia in 1998.
The Dohne Merino is a naturally polled, plain body sheep and therefore easy care. It has the ability to do well on low quality pasture and is adapted to a wide range of environmental and climatic conditions. As the Dohne is naturally bare breeched, the necessity for mulesing beyond the F1 or F2 stage is eliminated. The AWI bare breech scoring has been adopted by Dohne breeders.
Purebred and crossbred Dohnes can be run as a self-replacing meat-wool enterprise eliminating the need to buy in replacement or traditional first cross ewes as with other prime lamb breeds.
Purebred ewes produce from 4-6kg of high quality, white 18-22 micron wool in the tradition of the great Australian wool clip. They have high fertility with up to 150 percent lambing not uncommon. Slaughter lambs have rapid growth rates (350gms a day) up to weaning and can achieve a marketing weight of 50kg at six months of age.
